- The International
Space Station will have a mass of about 500 tons when it is completely
assembled.
- The station
will measure 361 feet end-to-end. That's equivalent to the length
of a football field, including the end zones.
- Once assembled,
the station will provide 46,000 cubic feet of pressurized living and
working space-equivalent to the interior volume of one 747 jumbo jet.
- Hauling the
parts and pieces of the space station into orbit will require 45 space
flights on three different types of launch vehicles over a five-year
period. This unprecedented, complex orchestration of space flights
will include the U.S. Space Shuttle and Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets.
- The station
will come with batteries included. It will have four U.S. photovoltaic
modules, each with two arrays measuring 112 feet long by 39 feet wide.
Each module generates about 23 kW. They rotate to face the sun, which
provides maximum power to the station.
- The solar array
surface area is 27,000 square feet, or more than half an acre.
- The electric
power system is connected with 42,000 feet, or about eight miles,
of wire.
- The batteries,
lined up end-to-end, measure 2,900 feet, more than ½ mile long.
- Electrical and
electronic parts include 1,900 different types of resistors, 500 types
of capacitors and 150 types of transistors (note that this is not
the part count; rather, it is a count of different types of hardware).
- The station
will have four windows for looking at Earth to conduct Earth observation
experiments and other applications.
- The station
will have a Habitation Module for the crew as well as six scientific
laboratories for research-a U.S. laboratory, the European Space Agency's
Columbus Orbital Facility, a Japanese experiment module and three
Russian research modules.
- Fifty-two computers
will control the systems on the International Space Station. There
will be more than 400,000 lines of software for 16 of those computers
which, in turn, talk to 2,000 sensors, effectors and embedded "smart"
hardware controllers.
- Two computers
in the U.S. laboratory are dedicated to keeping the station in proper
orientation (attitude) as it orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes.
- The flight support
software has 1.7 million lines of code.
- The 55-foot-long
robot arm, built by the Canadian Space Agency, has a 125-ton payload
capability and mobile transporter which can be positioned along the
station's truss for robotic assembly and maintenance operations.
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